Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) can be used to pay for massage and acupuncture treatments, as long as your physician recommends it with a written prescription. At HaLe’, we deeply believe in the effectiveness of our treatments, and are very excited to see bodywork, massage, and acupuncture covered as the health care it is.

To get a written prescription from your medical provider, you will need to talk with them about receiving treatment for a specific medical ailment. Some examples of qualifying issues are: stress, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. Explain to them that you have an HSA or FSA that you would like to use to pay for bodywork, massage, or acupuncture to address your ailment. If you are already receiving these kinds of treatments, tell your doctor about how much they are helping you and how effective you find them.

To support this conversation, HaLe’ is happy write a letter to bring with you, detailing our suggested treatment plan for that ailment. Your doctor may choose to write the prescription to match that plan or may make adjustments based on their expertise. Either way, the prescription needs to include these 3 pieces of information:

Medical necessity: what condition you are treating

Frequency: how many sessions per month

Duration: how many months

Once you have your prescription, let us know what it says and then file it away with your records in case you are ever asked to back up your expense. You can pay for your sessions at HaLe’ directly with the card or check associated with your health spending account, if you have them. Please note that gratuity is not considered part of the cost and so does not qualify as a qualifying expense. Also, for some people, our classes might also be effective treatments for their ailments, and prescriptions for those could also be appropriate.

At HaLe’, we want you to feel good about what you are doing for your health. These HSA and FSA payment options make our treatments more accessible, which means we can be effective health care for more people, so you can get better and feel good!

Ayurvedic cleanses are centered around a monodiet that includes whole grains, legumes, vegetables, ghee, many spices, and a wide variety of flavors. It is a simplified diet, but it is not a fast. Meals are tasty and satisfying, with complete proteins and balanced nutrients. The goal is to balance vata, pitta, and kapha, digest and eliminate toxins (ama), balance and strengthen metabolic fire (agni), and restore the body’s natural intelligence. This helps to reset our baseline health at very deep levels.

Your body would probably benefit from an Ayurvedic cleanse if you have any digestive difficulties, you have intense food cravings, or it is hard for you to know when you are hungry or tired. You could also benefit if you have low energy or exhaustion, or have trouble sleeping or waking up. Anxiety, stress, scattered thoughts, lack of concentration, having a foggy head, and feeling lethargic also indicate that a cleanse could be helpful.

The benefits of cleansing affect the whole system. It calms the mind and nervous system, and brings clarity and a sense of groundedness. It helps restore energy and vitality, and regulates sleep and digestion. It also helps prepare the tissues to receive deep nutrition and rejuvenation and promotes optimal health.

A cleanse can be a one day digestive reset, a simple 3 day cleanse, or a traditional ayurvedic cleanse, which lasts 3 to 21 days, depending on what is appropriate for your body. A key consideration is how much time and energy you can devote to the cleanse, ideally taking time off work and allowing your body to turn as much of its energy as possible to the cleansing process.

Auyrveda is a comprehensive system of health that seeks to correct imbalances, ideally while they are still small and easy to shift. Cleansing around the change of seasons is an effective way to strengthen metabolic fire (agni) and support health and renewal on many levels.

Yoga, at its heart, is therapeutic. It is an ancient system of connecting the mind and body so that they move together and support health and vitality. Though it is popular to use yoga as a means to fitness goals, that is a narrow interpretation of a comprehensive system of health and treatment.

Yoga is a form of mindfulness practice, cultivating awareness from within the body. By bringing attention to the breath and alignment, it trains and conditions the mind. This has been shown to help improve cognitive function, boost memory, and reduce baseline stress levels.

In many ways, gentle yoga is the most advanced yoga. Without fast pacing or high physical challenge to occupy the mind, your attention is able to turn to the wealth of information percolating up from within the body: the exact angle of knee bend that begins to make an old injury ache; a perpetual knot in your shoulders that brings certain memories to the surface; the joy that comes from releasing tension in the low back. By tuning in to this body wisdom, we are able to better engage with our health and support ourselves.

Slower, more deliberate yoga is therefore able to treat imbalances and address discomfort, often before they become a bigger issue. It supports flexibility, lubricates joints, develops strength, increases balance, and reduces mental, emotional, and physical stress levels. Also, because it does use slower and gentler poses, it is accessible to a wider range of practitioners. Do not mistake it for easy, but know that it creates space for a wide range of bodies, ages, and levels of experience.

At Ha.Lé, our yoga classes are based in mindfulness practice. They are designed as treatments to support health and to continue the care we offer in our appointments. Therapeutic yoga is an effective way to support the whole self, bringing body and mind together to create health.

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Knee pain is one of the most common types of joint pain, and as the body’s largest joint, it is also one of the most injured. Our knees act as big shock absorbers and so receive a lot of stress and strain every day. Studies have shown that acupuncture is effective in relieving several types of knee pain, including pain from arthritis, overuse, and injury.

Acupuncture begins by helping to increase circulation. By bringing more blood flow, the toxins and fluids that build up due to inflammation can be removed more quickly. This reduces swelling and the pain that swelling causes. As more blood circulates, it also brings more oxygen and nutrients to speed up the tissue repair process.

Next, acupuncture relaxes and loosens painful spots in the muscles and connective tissue. As these “knots” or “trigger points” release, it supports the healing of the tissue. Muscle fibers can take on too much tension as a result of injury and pain, and helping to relax this tension supports the healing process.

Acupuncture also works with the body’s own healing and pain relief process. It helps to regulate pain signals and turn down the volume of the alarm being sent through the nervous system. It releases endorphins, the body’s internal pain medicine, and releases serotonin, the feel good brain chemical.

Treating knee pain with with acupuncture is effective, and combines well with other treatments like bodywork, physical therapy, or prescribed medications. The treatment schedule is usually to come once or twice a week for a few weeks, and then drop down to a maintenance schedule when symptoms have improved. Knee pain can affect everyday mobility and quality of life. Acupuncture can help.

Our bodies are made to move, and specifically, to walk. We are fundamentally designed to use our feet to move from one place to another. This means that, on a biological level, walking activates important physical processes and balances our bodies in important and sometimes profound ways.

The power of walking comes through the movement. Our circulation increases, which allows our tissues to be nourished by more blood and oxygen. This nourishment allows them to repair and heal minor stresses, often before we notice them. Walking also allows us to enter into a naturally rhythmic state, which helps our minds shift into light meditation and stress reduction mode with ease.

The motion of putting one foot in front of the other coordinates complex interactions between muscles, bones, and connective tissues. It is an ongoing conversation that keeps each part healthy and connected to the whole. Increasing regular walks allows the body to adjust muscles and movements back toward healthy alignment and engagement, correcting some gait issues caused by too much sitting and not enough moving.

The corrective power of walking is well documented. Studies have shown that walking eases joint pain and arthritis by lubricating the joints and strengthening the muscles that support them. It also boosts immune function, reducing sick days by 43%. It can improve posture by reestablishing natural movement patterns, and it provides all the benefits of weight-bearing exercise. Because walking requires your body to stand upright against gravity, it increases bone density and muscle tone.

Walking is a powerful way to increase whole body health, and is especially effective when you go for walks outdoors. This brings you connection with nature, fresh air, and sunshine, helping to reduce stress levels and relax the body and mind. Walk more to increase your overall sense of well being.

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Breema is a set of techniques based on 9 Principles of Harmony. It does not require mental beliefs, only attention to the experience of the body. It provides a way to feel nurtured, rather than drained, by your experiences and relationships.

Breema can be done as self-care, done with a partner, and received as a bodywork. It uses simple forms of natural body movement to free your energy for productive work. Our physical energy is consumed by our mind, body and feelings. Conflicts and tension tie up more of that energy than necessary, and restoring harmony makes it available for other things, like our body’s natural healing processes.

As tension and conflict eases, it restores vitality and suppleness. New movements and postures become available. Mind, body, and feelings are able to create new relationships and function more cooperatively. Mood can regulate, stepping out of the cycle of pleasant and unpleasant states so that the mind can return to being a naturally supportive presence to the body.

Breema is done fully clothed on a padded floor, and brings an experience of wholeness. All our lives we don’t include ourselves in our impressions of life, and we think of our body as discrete, labeled parts like hands, arms, liver, heart, etc. By including the whole self and emphasizing that unity of being, Breema creates an experience. When we move into that experience, we remember that we are all part of a whole, our body parts are all part of our whole, and we are able to release tension and conflict in order to return to harmony.

The experience of Breema makes you simpler, not more complicated. Instead of fighting illness, it works to increase vitality. By moving toward harmony, vitality, and wholeness, Breema treatments restore natural function and bring a deep sense of wellbeing.